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Ten
The mysterious student who goes by “Ten” is the child of Zer0, the cryptic Vault Hunter from Borderlands 2. Personality Ten is… enigmatic, to say the least. There’s very little concrete knowledge regarding them. Even the school was stumped when they had to fill our their student ID. Ten has never directly stated their age, just that it’s somewhere between fifteen and eighteen, therefore old enough to be in high school. Their gender is… well, ambiguous at best and the fact that they prefer gender-neutral pronouns to anything else doesn’t help matters much. Whether they’re even human is up for debate. And don’t bother asking what Ten’s real name is. All that people really know is that they are the child of Zer0 and are very dangerous. Ten, due to being trained from a young age to be the world’s greatest assassin, takes their life and every variable in it extremely seriously. Sometimes their seriousness can make situations amusing. Other times it’s just plain creepy. Their voice, for example, is not very emotive. It seems permanently stuck in a rather unnerving flat tone, augmented by their voice modulator. They are rather quiet, though, and tend to speak primarily in short bursts, letting only a couple words slip at a time. Simple yes’s and no’s here and there, nothing major. Well, aside from the haikus they occasionally spout. Just like their daddy, the longest their sentences will ever be is seventeen syllables. They aren’t quite as good as their father when it comes to writing them on the spot, though. Often times they’ll add an extra syllable somewhere or forget how long each stanza has to be. That’s why a lot of their spare time, when they aren’t battling or studying, is spent writing haikus in advance. You never know when you need a poem about how bored you are. Somehow this poetry fixation kind of enhances their creepiness factor. Basic battle strategies come naturally to Ten. Basic social interactions, not so much. Their calm, expressionless demeanor doesn’t show it, but they are rather uncomfortable in social situations. Making small talk is rather difficult for them. Trying to tell jokes is even worse, as the concept of humour is hard for them to understand. They are rather literal minded, so sarcasm, double entendres and puns go right over their head. It’s really not worth it to try and have a conversation that’s not about murder, poems or hunting for treasure. Aside from the extensive training, Ten was raised on stories of amazing alien treasure troves, called vaults, all across the universe. The thought of finding those things, and fighting whatever they can along the way, is what keeps them going. This gives them an odd, magpie-like interest in things or potential value, or items that appear “shiny” regardless of their worth. (Ten has occasionally been seen playing with balls of tinfoil because they look like metallic minerals to them.) Sometimes they’ll take such objects without asking, as they don’t appear to think there’s anything wrong with what most people think of as ‘stealing’. Goes hand in hand with the lack of social skills, we guess. Or it could just be that they do know and don’t care. We have no idea really; Ten is just weird like that. Appearance Ten’s physical appearance, like everything else about them, is mysterious. Nobody’s ever seen them without of their ever present battle armour, nor have they ever donned any other clothes, face-obscuring or otherwise. In fact, Andromeda says that they even sleep with their helmet on. Weird, huh? Odd sleeping habits aside, the most you can tell about Ten’s appearance is what you can see from outside the sleek black suit. They are above average height, but not towering, and have a lithe but athletic build. Their body shape is such that it could either be that of a thin boy or a flat-chested girl, depending on how you look at it. It’s all up to interpretation, really. One noteworthy aspect of Ten’s appearance are their fingers. They appear to have four digits, three fingers and a thumb, on each hand. As stated before, Ten’s suit is dark in colour, consisting of black and some bits of grey and silver. It comes with boots, gloves and a helmet with an opaque faceplate. The faceplate will occasionally display holographic projections or show symbols, indicating the current emotion they are feeling. This is useful, given the inexpressive, deadpan way Ten speaks. Relationships Family Ten’s father, while not exactly what you would call ‘doting’, took great interest in raising his child. He made sure that by age three they already knew their way around a gun and could put their skills to good use. Their parent-child relationship was never the most emotional, but there’s certainly a strong bond in there. However, Ten is still convinced that they can surpass their father’s skills and is intent to prove their worth. Friends ‘Friendship’ implies closeness on a level that Ten isn’t exactly capable of. Ten has allies, cohorts perhaps, or maybe even associates, but not friends. Granted, there aren’t too many of those, considering how intimidating and cold they can be, but they’re trying to figure out a process in which to make them. They need people to help them when they set out for Pandora and start looking for those vaults. Lucinda Incendiary has taken a liking to them, since their mysterious nature makes her think of her parent. She often tries her hand at figuring out some of Ten’s secrets, as if it’s some sort of guessing game. Naturally, her results are fruitless and Ten just finds her irritating. Aota Touchdown is a bit of a rival of theirs, due to them both being assassins, but going about their business in completely opposite ways. Ten finds her endless sass to be unprofessional, though it can't help but remind them of a similarly sassy little girl that used to live on Pandora... In any case, they don't get along well and Ten looks for every opportunity to prove their superiority. Andromeda is Ten’s roommate. They are well aware of her interest in destroying Earth and they couldn’t care less. Earth is such a boring planet anyway, nobody gives a darn about what happens to Earth in their game. There were never any vaults on Earth, so who cares if it blows up. Their opinion on Andromeda herself is a very mixed bag. Most of the time they find her eccentric but worthy of their respect. Still, she’s kind of an annoyance. It depends on the day. Pet As an uncharacteristic act of kindness, Ten chose to adopt a little lost Skag Pup that they found wandering the deserts of Pandora. He wouldn’t survive much longer without food, so they took it in. The Skag was named Fang and currently resides in Ten’s dorm. They occasionally have to keep him from eating things he’s not supposed to (such as books, pillows, Andromeda’s shoes…) and spend some time playing with him when there’s nothing else to do. Believe us when we say that watching Ten say cutesy little phrases to their pet, still delivered in the most monotone voice imaginable, is the most frightening thing you’ll ever see. Romance You do realize that the topic of Ten’s gender is kind of… up in the air, correct? And that they are probably more interested in using you for target practise than going out with you, right? We ‘’are’’ talking about a child who was trained to be a cold assassin for their entire life here. It’s rather doubtful that Ten would engage in a relationship that is anything more than mutual respect. Trivia *Though Missy has had characters without a fixed gender before (namely Competer and EPP, who are robots, and Duplicity, who is a shapeshifting blob monster), these characters have identified with one sex or the other. Ten, regardless of whether or not they are male or female, sees themself as completely gender neutral and is therefore Missy’s first androgynous OC. *Oddly, Ten writes in leet speak regardless of whether or not they are using a computer. If handed a pen and paper and asked to write a message, they will still substitute letters with numbers, making it hard to understand what they are saying at times. (Needless to say, the textbox above was written via transcript.) *A combination of the way the device that makes Ten’s voice audible through the helmet sounds and the fact that their voice sounds rather androgynous makes their gender even more mysterious. *It’s worth noting that they do not like being confused with another androgynous student at the school whose parent also goes by Zero. That is to say, Nadir. That annoys them. Category:Missy's Peeps Category:Gender-Neutral Category:Borderlands Category:Protagonist Category:Gearbox Software Category:Original Characters